Replacing sadness with joy

Replacing sadness with joy

J.D. Fitzgerald/ Special to the Explorer, When Jay Knapp goes to the Tucson Medical Center, he's always got his magic kit, a smile, a story and some illusions for children and their parents who could use a lift.

Replacing sadness with joy

J.D. Fitzgerald/ Special to the Explorer, Jay Knapp, 81, keeps the shells moving when entertaining children at the Tucson Medical Center. He has been named Citizen of the Year by the Rotary Club of Oro Valley.

Replacing sadness with joy

J.D. Fitzgerald/ Special to the Explorer, Jay Knapp plays a shell game with Luis and his mother Leticia at the Tucson Medical Center.

Last week, Knapp, the 2010 Rotary Club of Oro
Valley Citizen of the Year, played a shell game at the Tucson
Medical Center for Luis, whose appendix burst nearly two weeks ago.
Luis' roommate Ryan is lending one eye, anyway, cautiously
wondering who this elderly gentleman is, and what he's about.

Early on, the boys know just which of the
three walnut-shaped half-shells is hiding the pea.

"Remember how that feels, because it's the
last time" they'll get it right, Knapp tells them.

His interest piqued, Ryan adjusts his bed to
see better. The boys guess at which shell covers the pea … and
they're always wrong.

Knapp rips a magazine page in half, and the
boys shred it further. He squeezes the pieces and blows on them.
Magically, the picture is restored, fully intact. Everyone
applauds, and the boys' faces light up.

There it is. The moment.

So often, "you look at the child's eyes, and
they're sad," Knapp said. "I want to replace sadness and despair
with joy, and that's the way you get back towards healing."

Knapp's first day doing magic for ill children
hurt too much. He couldn't bear the thought of going back.

"Look at their face, look at their eyes when
you begin, and when you finish," Knapp's son told him. "The eyes
will tell you everything."

Now, "it's been 12 years, 11-1/2 at TMC,"
Knapp said, and he goes back every week.

•••

Ryan's mom watches like a hawk. Jay turns a
$10 bill into a $100 bill, before their eyes. She wonders how he
did it.

"Can you keep a secret?" he asks.

"Of course," she says.

"Me, too," he says.

"I love to deal with mamas," Knapp said. "On
certain things, I have the moms participate. They're the mirror.
The kids look at the parents. If the kids are down, they bring the
parent down, and vice versa. If they're feeling good about
themselves, and not so disenfranchised from the human race, you can
respond to healing faster."

He's been "hugged by more grandmas, and
kissed, and heard languages I don't understand, you can't believe,"
Knapp said.

"It does help," said Luis' mother, Leticia.
"It boosts their spirits. We've been here 13 days. To see him
happy, it helps."

One day, Knapp worked his magic on a very ill
girl, maybe 13, who'd lost all her hair to cancer treatment. She
cracked a faint, guarded smile, yielded a little giggle, "and then
it was laughter," Knapp said.

Her father, "a big, big man," approached Knapp
afterward.

"My daughter hasn't smiled in weeks, and she
hasn't laughed in months," Knapp said. "Thank God for a man like
you."

•••

Knapp touches the head of each boy with a
magic wand.

"I hope that you get better fast," he said.
"You have the magic in you, and you're going to get stronger and
stronger every day, you will really."

He's seen it happen.

"You can't think of two things at once," Knapp
said. "They start concentrating on the thing that's most appealing.
You get them to laugh, and stop thinking about the pain. Laughing
is vital. It's everything."

Knapp tells many stories about the
interactions he's had with young children, some of them "so
fearful, so frightened." One afraid child "went into surgery
laughing and giggling" after a session of magic. "I gave him the
magic coin," Knapp said. "I always give the magic coins out.
They're 24-karat plastic."

When Knapp walks into a room, and it's dark,
"that's not a good situation," he said. Knapp opens the blinds,
turns on the lights and turns off the TV. "I don't like
competition," he said.

So, now, he wants to teach blind children how
to do magic. "What would that mean to a blind child? A blind
magician? I will run through fire to see him. I will teach a blind
child, or two or three. It would be a bonanza of a breakthrough. We
can conquer a whole world. Why not?"

His heart is often struck. A homeless boy told
Knapp he liked a shelter, because he "was never warm" in a doorway.
A school child cried and cried, then stopped, his tears locking on
his cheeks while Knapp showed some magic. One child, terribly ill,
asked Knapp to "please touch me and make me well," and told another
child "only the magician can do it."

"The belief is so deep, even I am surprised,"
Knapp said.

Too often, performing magic for very ill
children is very sad, very difficult, very painful. "You have to
have a little different fortitude," Knapp said. "I'm not immune to
it. I see it. I feel it."

Why does he do this, at 81, a disabled
American veteran, time affecting his body, himself a cancer
patient?

"I know what it is, I'm living this right
now," he said. "When I can take a kid that is really defeated,
feeling so bad, and transform him even a little bit, I win.

"It's right here," he said, tapping himself on
the chest, near his heart. "For me, it is the right thing to do. I
don't need confirmation from anyone.

"To take a kid, defeated and fearful, and wipe
that out in seconds, what else would you want?"